1. No infrastructure – plan doesn’t solve and causes more virulent strains of HIV
Rick Hink, American University School of International Service, 2001
[“Intellectual Property and AIDS Medication in South Africa,” May 9, http://www.american.edu/ted/aidstrips.htm] Rein
The often-unheard side of the story comes from the medical community. Scientists also question the prudence of allowing cheap AIDS drugs into the South African market. For anti-retrovirals to be effective, the regimen must be monitored strictly and requires a developed medical infrastructure that South Africadoes not have. Official U.S. policy also supports development of the infrastructure over reducing prices. Why is the infrastructure so important? When dosages are skipped, low levels of the HIV virus can continue to reproduce in the body. Through natural selection, the viruses that have survived and reproduced are those most resistant to the treatment. Slowly but surely, a mutation of HIV that does not respond to anti-retroviral treatment will develop. Scientists worry that this could worsen the epidemic and even spread back to the West. In the U.S., 10% of patients harbor drug-resistant strains of HIV - there's no telling how bad it could get when drugs are used in an unsupervised, underdeveloped market.
2. No Impact – their Muchuri evidence claim that if AIDs left the continent of Africa we would become extinct is non-unique and ridiculous
3. Compulsory licensing hinders access to drugs
Richard Rozek, Senior Vice President at National Economic Research Associates, 2000
[“The Effects of Compulsory Licensing on Innovation and Access to Health Care,” The Journal of World Intellectual Property, Volume 3, No. 6, November, pp. 889-917, http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1747-1796.2000.tb00158.x, OCRed] Rein
Compulsory licensing does not improve access to health care and, in fact, makes it more difficult for consumers to gain access to pharmaceutical products. Compulsory licensing forces innovators to relinquish their technologies and destroys their incentives to conductR&D. Consumers suffer because they are denied access to the new, improved medicines that would have been discovered and developed as a resultof R&D conducted by pharmaceutical firms. Compulsory licensing makes companies reluctant to introduce their products in countries, and further inhibits access to pharmaceuticals. Studies have also found that compulsory licensing reduces the ratio of informative advertising to persuasive advertising, which makes it more difficult for consumers and doctors to access proper information about health care. Compulsory licensing is unnecessary to prevent monopoly power, given that therapeutic and eventual generic competition exist in a market. It inhibits access to health care and creates additional costs for a country. Designing, implementing and enforcing a compulsory licensing policy is inefficient and costly. <22-23>
4. Compulsory licensing results in prescribing low quality drugs which are harmful to people’s health
Richard Rozek, Senior Vice President at National Economic Research Associates, 2000
[“The Effects of Compulsory Licensing on Innovation and Access to Health Care,” The Journal of World Intellectual Property, Volume 3, No. 6, November, pp. 889-917, http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1747-1796.2000.tb00158.x, OCRed] Rein
With respect to pharmaceuticals, representatives of developing countries and a number of non-governmental organizations express concern that protecting IPRS will inhibit access to essential pharmaceutical products such as those on the World Health Organization’s (WHO’S) model List of Essential Drugs. However, only 15 of the 306 products on the List, or less than 5 percent, are protected by patents.28 Compulsory licensing does not improve access to these essential medicines. Rather, it provides opportunities for firms pursuing their own economic interests to obtain access to the most profitable products. Even when essential medicines are available to people in developing countries, “the prescribing and consumer use of medicines [in developing countries] is often ineffective, wasteful, or even harmful. Poor quality drugs, including counterfeit medicines, constitute a continuing health hazard.”29 To illustrate the quality problems that may exist under compulsory licenses, consider the following example from another therapeutic category, antibiotics. Clarithromycin is a broad-spectrum antibiotic that is proven to be an effective treatment for a variety of upper and lower respiratory tract infections. The brand product is sold by Abbott Laboratories under several brand names including Klacid. In a recent study of forty versions of clarithromycin from Latin America and Asia, “few generic products met the combined criteria of acceptable clarithromycin content, adequate dissolution, and low levels of impurities that are applied to the innovator product.”30 Thus, the copies of clarithromycin studies were not equivalent to the brand product, costs and prices of health care goods and services.27 <9>
5. Pharmaceutical companies are less likely to introduce drugs in countries with compulsory licensing law
Richard Rozek, Senior Vice President at National Economic Research Associates, 2000
[“The Effects of Compulsory Licensing on Innovation and Access to Health Care,” The Journal of World Intellectual Property, Volume 3, No. 6, November, pp. 889-917, http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1747-1796.2000.tb00158.x, OCRed] Rein
Innovative pharmaceutical firms will be reluctant to introduce products in countries with compulsory licensing laws. Such countries will receive new medications later than countries without compulsory licensing since innovators do not want to create additional sources of supply of products in a given country that potentially could be exported to other countries. Compulsory licensing as a response to differential prices is, thus, inefficient and harmful to consumers. Moreover, IPRs are not the sources of access problems for health care in developing countries. Political, informational, financial, physical, social, or ethnic problems unrelated to the pharmaceutical industry inhibit access. For example, providing safe drinking water and proper sanitation have a greater impact on increasing life expectancy than spending on pharmaceutical products.33 In fact, not protecting IPRS is a likely cause of reduced access to health care because of the reluctance of pharmaceutical firms to introduce products in some countries. To determine whether protecting IPRS has an effect on when a country receives a pharmaceutical product, consider the first reported sales of six drugs (Prozac, Losec, Norvasc, Unasyn, Inhibase and Axid) in nine countries. Prior to 1996, four countries (Korea, Mexico, Taiwan and Hungary) protected IPRS, while the five other countries (Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey) did not protect IPRs . Each of the six products was initially sold in at least one of the nine countries after June 1985. Korea, the first country in the sample to protect IPRS, received four of the six drugs studied either first or second among the nine countries. More dramatic, two products, Axid and Unasyn, were not even introduced in three of the five countries that did not protect IPRs for pharmaceuticals. These products were initially launched in Korea in March 1990 and June 1988, respectively. This analysis shows that it is not protecting IPRS that limits access to medicines. Lack of respect for IPRS actually creates access problems (see Table 3) <10-11>
1. No infrastructure – plan doesn’t solve and causes more virulent strains of HIV
Rick Hink, American University School of International Service, 2001
[“Intellectual Property and AIDS Medication in South Africa,” May 9, http://www.american.edu/ted/aidstrips.htm] Rein
The often-unheard side of the story comes from the medical community. Scientists also question the prudence of allowing cheap AIDS drugs into the South African market. For anti-retrovirals to be effective, the regimen must be monitored strictly and requires a developed medical infrastructure that South Africa does not have. Official U.S. policy also supports development of the infrastructure over reducing prices. Why is the infrastructure so important? When dosages are skipped, low levels of the HIV virus can continue to reproduce in the body. Through natural selection, the viruses that have survived and reproduced are those most resistant to the treatment. Slowly but surely, a mutation of HIV that does not respond to anti-retroviral treatment will develop. Scientists worry that this could worsen the epidemic and even spread back to the West. In the U.S., 10% of patients harbor drug-resistant strains of HIV - there's no telling how bad it could get when drugs are used in an unsupervised, underdeveloped market.
2. No Impact – their Muchuri evidence claim that if AIDs left the continent of Africa we would become extinct is non-unique and ridiculous
3. Compulsory licensing hinders access to drugs
Richard Rozek, Senior Vice President at National Economic Research Associates, 2000
[“The Effects of Compulsory Licensing on Innovation and Access to Health Care,” The Journal of World Intellectual Property, Volume 3, No. 6, November, pp. 889-917, http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1747-1796.2000.tb00158.x, OCRed] Rein
Compulsory licensing does not improve access to health care and, in fact, makes it more difficult for consumers to gain access to pharmaceutical products. Compulsory licensing forces innovators to relinquish their technologies and destroys their incentives to conduct R&D. Consumers suffer because they are denied access to the new, improved medicines that would have been discovered and developed as a result of R&D conducted by pharmaceutical firms. Compulsory licensing makes companies reluctant to introduce their products in countries, and further inhibits access to pharmaceuticals. Studies have also found that compulsory licensing reduces the ratio of informative advertising to persuasive advertising, which makes it more difficult for consumers and doctors to access proper information about health care. Compulsory licensing is unnecessary to prevent monopoly power, given that therapeutic and eventual generic competition exist in a market. It inhibits access to health care and creates additional costs for a country. Designing, implementing and enforcing a compulsory licensing policy is inefficient and costly. <22-23>
4. Compulsory licensing results in prescribing low quality drugs which are harmful to people’s health
Richard Rozek, Senior Vice President at National Economic Research Associates, 2000
[“The Effects of Compulsory Licensing on Innovation and Access to Health Care,” The Journal of World Intellectual Property, Volume 3, No. 6, November, pp. 889-917, http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1747-1796.2000.tb00158.x, OCRed] Rein
With respect to pharmaceuticals, representatives of developing countries and a number of non-governmental organizations express concern that protecting IPRS will inhibit access to essential pharmaceutical products such as those on the World Health Organization’s (WHO’S) model List of Essential Drugs. However, only 15 of the 306 products on the List, or less than 5 percent, are protected by patents.28 Compulsory licensing does not improve access to these essential medicines. Rather, it provides opportunities for firms pursuing their own economic interests to obtain access to the most profitable products. Even when essential medicines are available to people in developing countries, “the prescribing and consumer use of medicines [in developing countries] is often ineffective, wasteful, or even harmful. Poor quality drugs, including counterfeit medicines, constitute a continuing health hazard.”29 To illustrate the quality problems that may exist under compulsory licenses, consider the following example from another therapeutic category, antibiotics. Clarithromycin is a broad-spectrum antibiotic that is proven to be an effective treatment for a variety of upper and lower respiratory tract infections. The brand product is sold by Abbott Laboratories under several brand names including Klacid. In a recent study of forty versions of clarithromycin from Latin America and Asia, “few generic products met the combined criteria of acceptable clarithromycin content, adequate dissolution, and low levels of impurities that are applied to the innovator product.”30 Thus, the copies of clarithromycin studies were not equivalent to the brand product, costs and prices of health care goods and services.27 <9>
5. Pharmaceutical companies are less likely to introduce drugs in countries with compulsory licensing law
Richard Rozek, Senior Vice President at National Economic Research Associates, 2000
[“The Effects of Compulsory Licensing on Innovation and Access to Health Care,” The Journal of World Intellectual Property, Volume 3, No. 6, November, pp. 889-917, http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1747-1796.2000.tb00158.x, OCRed] Rein
Innovative pharmaceutical firms will be reluctant to introduce products in countries with compulsory licensing laws. Such countries will receive new medications later than countries without compulsory licensing since innovators do not want to create additional sources of supply of products in a given country that potentially could be exported to other countries. Compulsory licensing as a response to differential prices is, thus, inefficient and harmful to consumers. Moreover, IPRs are not the sources of access problems for health care in developing countries. Political, informational, financial, physical, social, or ethnic problems unrelated to the pharmaceutical industry inhibit access. For example, providing safe drinking water and proper sanitation have a greater impact on increasing life expectancy than spending on pharmaceutical products.33 In fact, not protecting IPRS is a likely cause of reduced access to health care because of the reluctance of pharmaceutical firms to introduce products in some countries. To determine whether protecting IPRS has an effect on when a country receives a pharmaceutical product, consider the first reported sales of six drugs (Prozac, Losec, Norvasc, Unasyn, Inhibase and Axid) in nine countries. Prior to 1996, four countries (Korea, Mexico, Taiwan and Hungary) protected IPRS, while the five other countries (Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey) did not protect IPRs . Each of the six products was initially sold in at least one of the nine countries after June 1985. Korea, the first country in the sample to protect IPRS, received four of the six drugs studied either first or second among the nine countries. More dramatic, two products, Axid and Unasyn, were not even introduced in three of the five countries that did not protect IPRs for pharmaceuticals. These products were initially launched in Korea in March 1990 and June 1988, respectively. This analysis shows that it is not protecting IPRS that limits access to medicines. Lack of respect for IPRS actually creates access problems (see Table 3) <10-11>